


Family Ties

by KathrynShadow



Category: DC Extended Universe
Genre: Attempted Parenting, Breaking and Entering, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Gen, IDENTITY SHENANIGANS, Jason Todd-related PTSD, mercenary bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26049037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/pseuds/KathrynShadow
Summary: Batman is in her living room. (Which is her only room outside of the bathroom, but still.)
Relationships: Batman & Harleen Quinzel, Harleen Quinzel & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 141
Collections: Fifth DCEU Fanworks Exchange





	Family Ties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> I tried to keep it on topic but started throwing other Batfam members in too IM SORRY

The thing is that Harley’s spent so much of her time trying to figure out how to not get Batman’s attention that she has no fuckin’ clue how to do the opposite.

Okay, that’s a lie. She could get his attention, like, super easily. But not in a way that would make him feel super friendly or willing to listen to anything she says. And sure, she could endure that, she’s been punched by the guy a few hundred times before, but she doesn’t just have to worry about herself anymore. And besides that, if she got arrested again she might end up getting involved in secret agent bullshit again and that went so well last time, right?

So, well, the problem is… that she’s behaving. Or trying to behave, kind of, or at least trying more than she has since, uh…

…Well, she _did_ actually earn her doctorate, no matter what Stacy Jennings thought. So probably since about then. And if there’s one thing that she knows about Batman, mostly because he tried so hard to drill it into her every time he took her in, it’s that he won’t bother her unless she’s making trouble for him. And that was fine when she didn’t give a shit, when making trouble for him was the closest thing she had to a day job or a hobby or any kind of fuckin’ life in the first place. It was also fine when she did give a shit, just tried to keep her head down and coast along on her ex’s wrath (psh, like that was predictable enough to really protect her, but the rest of Gotham didn’t seem to realize that) and her own reputation for being fundamentally not worth the trouble of more minor forms of harassment.

It’s not so fine right now. Mostly, right now, it’s just a lot of her sitting around, waiting for people to need a mercenary, and thinking about how the hell Batman notices anybody who isn’t blowing shit up around town.

She could nearly _get_ blown up. If it was the Batman who was around when she was still in college, that might not be the worst plan. He did get… a little slower, though, and even though he’s been revitalized or whatever and has gone back to his every-life-is-sacred-and-I-have-to-save-everyone-all-the-time-even-if-they’re-a-colossal-douchebag schtick, there’s still enough of a risk of him showing up not quite in the nick of time that she doesn’t wanna deal with it. (It’s not that she blames him. He’s probably human. Humans get old.)

…Also, she isn’t entirely sure where to go for some good old-fashioned kinda-danger, the whole damsel on the traintracks at the end of a puzzle maze thing. Most of the people who were likely to pull that shit have gone a _little_ farther off the deep end since then, and she never really got along with most of them anyway. (Especially Edward, and he was definitely the most likely to go for the “hostage puzzle maze” route.)

There are all kinds of lower-key fights she could get into on purpose, but Bats has definitely seen her take care of herself enough times that he probably won’t swoop in unless he needed something from the other guy. And look, maybe he’s defanged himself a little since Superman died, but she still really _really_ doesn’t want to get in the middle of one of his interrogations. Like, ever. For any reason. Even if she’s not the one being interrogated.

If she was a completely different person who had spent her whole life doing completely different things, she could maybe try and get in touch with the cops about getting in touch with him. But. Even if she was being non-lethal about it, there _was_ that teeny tiny little incident at the GCPD when she was still looking for Cass. (Which was hilarious and cool, for the record, but they probably wouldn’t see it like that, ACAB and blah blah. Like, look at what they did to Renee. How could they not be?) And even if the cops didn’t mind her, Gordon was the only one of them who didn’t mind Batman still, so. Not an option for a whole bunch of reasons, but damn would it have been convenient if it had been.

It’s not like she _needs_ to talk to Batman, not really. She could just go on her way, keep her head down, try to figure out this new life she’s piecing together. But… look, the Birds of Prey (god, who even thought of that name? How dorky is that? Why did they all go along with it?) were nice to her when they really shouldn’t have been, and it’s a scary world out there. They know it as well as she does, but she can probably count the number of genuine, non-backstabby friendships she’s had on one hand, and she’s allowed to want to protect them a little bit. Even if “protect them” actually means “track down the most terrifying furry in the world and ask him nicely to do it even though he has a lot of reasons to hate her”.

So. She finds a new place, settles down as much as she ever does, tries to figure out how to actually get real work with her notoriety for random bullshit. And she doesn’t plan anything, but she thinks about it a lot.

(Somehow, it never occurs to her that Batman would ever seek _her_ out.)

* * *

It’s never quiet in Gotham. It’s especially never quiet in the dingy-ass corner that Harley’s installed herself in, which paradoxically makes it even harder to pick out weird noises. Maybe the window creaks a little, or maybe it’s the cute goth lady across the street letting her cat prowl the balcony. Maybe there’s no sound at all.

The shitty sofa (she found it on the corner when she moved in; the mold came out pretty quick and there’s only one spring jabbing through the cushion, so it’s still an improvement) faces the television and also the door. It faces away from the window, because the kind of psycho who would break into the sixth storey from the window is the kind of psycho who already lives there. She’d rather be able to see all of the entrances to her place at once, but she is capable of making compromises, and also it’s not like no one’s busted down her wall before. Technically.

Anyway, the point is, she’s fully curled up on the couch, burritoed in a blanket with just enough of her poking out that she can breathe and see and destroy a bulk pack of extra-long Twizzlers, and she’s watching the television. It's on _Gilmore Girls_ reruns and she still can’t quite tell if she’s genuinely or ironically invested in it, but she’s some kinda invested, and Cass (texting) and Bruce (asleep at her feet) aren’t. Cass heaves herself up from the couch with a creak and the most pointed sigh in the universe, starts heading towards the kitchenette (or, uh, the bit of the apartment where a fridge is and a stove might have been once), and freezes in her tracks like a spooked gazelle.

“Holy shit,” she breathes.

“Language,” Harley says, because she’s pretty sure that’s something that an adult would say, but she knows real fear when she sees it so she turns to look.

A half-eaten Twizzler slips from her nerveless fingers, bounces off of her blanketed kneecap and vanishes into the depths of the sofa, never to be seen again.

“Holy _fucking_ shit,” she squeaks, because there’s somebody in her apartment and it can’t possibly be Batman but it’s about as tall as him and her subconscious must just be adding in the cowl and shit because she’s been thinking about him a lot lately, and this is exactly why her business card has a phone number and not an address, and Bruce wakes up at the alarm in her voice and immediately gets the hackles and the snarling going and Harley can’t figure out how to stand up in her blanket but she manages to throw the pack of Twizzlers at the lightswitch and _oh god oh fuck it **is** Batman._

Batman is in her living room. (Which is her only room outside of the bathroom, but still.) He’s almost too tall for the ceiling, or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s really fucking freaked out right now, and goddammit he couldn’t knock for once, and—

“Down, Brucie,” she says, her fingers finding the tuft of an ear and smoothing the fur down the back of his skull. Batman blinks, but she doesn’t know enough about him to tell if it was a reaction or if his eyes just got dry. “Friend, okay. Friend?” It’s definitely a question, and she definitely could have phrased it better now that she’s talking to a human (?) instead of a hyena.

Batman still looms at her, but there’s a different energy to it than usual. She just can’t quite pin it down. “That’s up to you,” he says, in that creepy-ass modulated voice. “I didn’t come here for a fight.”

Harley titters nervously. Cassandra looks at her, then at him, and then her natural impulse to be snarky overcomes her initial fear, and she speaks. “You broke in,” she says, as though explaining the obvious to a child. Or, uh, a younger child. “Through the _window.”_

His eyes flick to the kid. “You wouldn’t have answered the door if I tried anything else.”

“I might’ve,” Harley says defensively. Okay, sure, maybe she would have freaked out on instinct _at first_ and gotten halfway through barricading it before remembering that she did actually want to talk to the guy, but she would have answered it eventually.

Batman looks unconvinced. In her rattiest pajamas, a violently tie-dye blanket still half tangled around her waist, she doesn’t feel super convincing.

She straightens up. She’s not exactly tiny, but the wannabe cryptid silhouetted against her window makes everyone else look short. It’s something she’s always kinda hated about him. “So,” she says. “You not actually here to take me anywhere or do you just not wanna arrest me in front of the kid?”

Cassandra flinches. Batman doesn’t. “I’m here to talk,” he says.

It’s possible that he’ll talk with Cass there. It’s also possible that he won’t, and if she gets the jump on him before he can try demanding it, she can at least act like it was her idea. “Okay,” she says. “How about you take a walk for a sec, Cass?”

“It’s, like, 2 AM,” Cassandra objects. “I thought you _didn’t_ want me dead.”

“Bring Bruce, he needs a walk anyway. You’ll be fine.” Bruce makes a small sound that could be excitement or a protest. (She… doesn’t actually know as much about hyenas as she probably should.)

The kid is silent for a few seconds, and then she does one of her full-body eyerolls and goes to find the leash. Bruce gives Harley a long, concerned look, licks her hand, and trots after Cass.

No one says a word until after the door closes. Harley takes a slow breath, as steady as she can make it—okay, assuming Bats is telling the truth, nothing bad is gonna happen, but past trauma is past trauma. Sure, she deserved it at the time, but this is the first time she’s been in a room with Batman outside of Arkham or Blackgate in a nonviolent context.

Somewhere behind her, Lorelai Gilmore snaps at her mother. Harley fumbles for the remote and turns the television off.

“I heard you were working together,” Batman says, and isn’t that a hell of a way to break the ice?

“Just to make sure we’re on the same page,” Harley says, raising her hands, “I definitely did not kidnap her.”

“I know.” It’s probably best for her not to wonder how he knows. “Officially, she’s a runaway.”

“And unofficially, no one cares enough to look for her.” Harley’s mouth twists and she looks away, nodding in acknowledgement at the wall until she can fight the expression into a smile. “Been there, done that, got the self-esteem and abandonment issues. She stuck around, I wasn’t gonna tell her to leave. You know?”

She expects judgement. He just watches her with that same infuriatingly blank expression. “I know,” he says, finally. “I’m concerned about involving her in your work, though.”

Harley laughs, more nerves than humor. “Couldn’t stop her if I tried,” she says. “I mean, we met because she couldn’t stop stealing shit for two minutes. I figure she can get into trouble on her own or she can get into _supervised_ trouble, and that’s probably better, right?”

Batman doesn’t flinch. She’s almost completely sure that it’s impossible for him to flinch. But he does look away, and his mouth tightens, and she doesn’t know how to categorize that as anything else. “Not always,” he says, and she really wishes that emotion came through his voice getup a little clearer.

 _(Robin,_ she thinks, like a lightning bolt in the dark.)

“I’m sorry,” Harley says suddenly, without thinking, without even really meaning to speak. “About… you know.” Because that narrows it down, doesn’t it, and she may not have ever been a therapist and her license to practice anything psychiatric was _definitely_ revoked a while back, but she knows a shitty apology when she hears it. (She’s heard a lot of them.) And maybe it’s a tiny bit of a self-destructive streak rearing its violent little head, just seeing exactly how tame Batman is right now; maybe it’s the Birds’ brief influence; maybe it’s something else, but it makes her speak. “About Robin.”

(It had felt like such a victory, then. Batman himself was untouchable, but Robin only thought that he was. The one weakness that they knew for a fact they could exploit. She doesn’t even remember whose idea it was, who did the planning; but she remembers seeing his broken body, mask torn off and costume destroyed, and feeling something wild and empty she had no name for. There was no going back after that. There hadn’t been for months, but part of her hadn’t realized it yet.)

Batman is silent for a long time. She finds herself listening, a hair-trigger impulse to bolt shaking in her veins, for the faintest noise: the creak of a gauntlet tightening, the barest shift of his stance into something more aggressive. But he’s as still as the gargoyles he seems to love so much.

Her hands twist around the edge of the blanket, the fabric damp from her palms. Harley wishes, hysterically, that he’d just throw a punch and give her something she understood.

The rasp of his breath makes her twitch. “You didn’t kill him,” he says. It isn’t forgiveness, but she wasn’t expecting it.

She was the one to catch him. She ran interference when Batman got too close too fast. She was there over the days Robin was kept alive, just as a taunt. She was there in the end, watching him die.

 _(”Fuck you,”_ he’d slurred out through a crushed windpipe and broken ribs, his skull fractured, his mouth nearly swollen shut: his last words. Batman wasn’t there to hear them, but she was. She remembers laughing—)

“But I helped,” she objects, and that part is definitely the self-destructive streak. But hey, she’s identified it, and identifying it is the first step to maybe doing something about it later. Maybe.

“We both did.”

Harley bites her tongue, not sure of how to respond to that. For all that she fought them both, she doesn’t actually know that much about Batman _or_ Robin, how they interacted, who they were to each other. She’s almost completely sure that what he just said is bullshit, but she can’t back that up with anything. So she doesn’t.

“Well,” she says. “Anyway. I’m guessin’ you didn’t just come here to catch up.”

“I did,” he replies.

“Oh.” Harley tries to shove her hands in pockets she doesn’t have before just awkwardly twisting her fingers together in front of herself. “Why?”

Batman pauses. He sure seems to do that a lot more when talking than when fighting. It’s… better, she guesses? “You’ve changed,” he says finally. “I… didn’t think you would leave him behind. If you did, I didn’t think you would stay in Gotham. I underestimated you, and I’m sorry.”

God, that sounds so wrong in that voice. Harley shrugs, turning away and sinking back onto the couch, since they’re apparently in this for the long haul. “I’m used to it,” she says, flippant. “I couldn’t leave Gotham, though. It’s…”

It’s a horrible place. The whole of it stinks, and it doesn’t even have the decency to have the same smell all over. The weather is awful almost all the time, there’s always a gang war going on and it’s always _themed._ It gets torn apart and blown up often enough that there’s always construction and it’s always in the least convenient part of your route to wherever you’re going. She’s pretty sure the whole city is haunted.

“It’s home now,” she says. “You know?” (As if he wouldn’t. As if he’s been spotted outside of its limits more than a handful of times.)

“Yeah,” he says, so quietly it’s just a rumble.

Harley looks over at him. “When’d you find out we broke up?” she asks.

He shifts his weight like he wants to start pacing but doesn’t quite have enough room for it. “I suspected it for a while,” he says. “He was sloppier. Subtler. I thought there was something bigger coming, but it didn’t, and you didn’t seem to even be trying to stay in touch with him.” Batman’s mouth twitches. “The picture you used for target practice was also a sign.”

Not ACE. Before ACE. As hugely fucking creepy as the idea of Batman digging through her old place is, something still unwinds slightly at the fact that someone—anyone—believed it was over before she made it impossible to think anything else.

“Aww,” she says. “You were stalking me?”

“I stalk a lot of people.”

Harley snickers, looking at the black television screen. “Can’t even let me feel special for a second, huh?” she murmurs. “So if you were already keeping tabs on me, why didn’t you show up then?”

He finally steps away from the window to move closer to the door, keeping himself in her line of sight even without her craning her neck. “You were keeping to yourself,” he says. “Not getting involved, not trying to. You deserved a chance to live a normal life if you could find one. I didn’t want to drag you back into this if it wasn’t your choice.”

It’s…

It’s not what she was expecting to hear.

“I never was that good at staying out of trouble,” she murmurs. “Trouble pays better, anyhow. And I have a kid to look after now, I guess, so.”

Batman doesn’t fidget. He doesn’t even shift uncomfortably. He’s not a statue, though, and she’s started to notice that he goes even _more_ still sometimes—like he wants to react, like he would if he were normal, but he overcorrects into not moving at all. He does that now.

The problem with it is that she can’t actually identify what it means. Harley huffs at herself, looking away again. The silence feels thick and heavy like a fleece blanket during a fever—too warm to keep, too chilled to take off.

“Can I be honest with ya, Bats?” she asks quietly.

He watches her. “That’s for you to decide.”

Emotions have always built too fast for her. No matter what they were. It only got worse after Arkham, after ACE, after Blackgate, after every little thing that rattled her skull. Now, it means she hasn’t even begun to form the words before she can feel pressure behind her eyeballs. “I know I’m not good for her,” she says, voice already wobbly and _damn it._ “I mean, I’m probably the worst for her. I don’t even know how to take care of myself, and… and it started out with me just takin’ her to get her cut from hawking the diamond, since it was only fair with her nearly dyin’ and all, and I know I shoulda taken her back to Dinah after that but I…”

She trails off, hoping to be interrupted, but Batman isn’t feeling merciful. Or he is, and it’s just a kind of mercy that hurts right now.

“I was lonely,” Harley says. Her vision blurs. It’s not the first time he’s seen her cry, but it’s the first time she felt like she had a choice. “I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to stay with their little squad. And Cassie was just… just a little baby criminal genius and they woulda trained that right out of her, y’know? And also I stole Dinah’s car and it would have been pretty awkward. But Cass seemed to like me and so I thought, maybe just… for a bit, and now… But fuck, Bats, I’m not a _mom._ I should never, ever be anybody’s mom. I’m just gonna fuck her up.” Her voice cracks.

He’s silent for a moment—but not motionless, so she waits, sniffling quietly. “But you care about that,” he says, finally. “That puts you ahead of where she was.”

Harley laughs helplessly. (She hates, she _hates_ that there’s a tiny stab of anxiety every time that happens, the absurd fear that she wasn’t just surprised by a joke, that the laughter will keep coming and she won’t be able to breathe through it—) “What, you’re not gonna… gonna try and take her away from me? Find some nice set of normal parents or whatever?”

“Were you hoping I would?”

She can’t answer that. She swallows heavily and looks at her hands. Chipped nail polish and bruised knuckles, chewed-off hangnails, a dozen little scars from incidents she doesn’t even remember anymore.

The sofa dips with an ominous squeal, tilting her side of the cushion towards the middle. Harley thinks about staying where she is, but hell, he wouldn’t have sat down if he wanted to keep his distance, and she’s never been one for gauging the wisdom of her actions before charging forward with them. She lets herself slump with the shift of his weight on the couch, her temple bumping into the plate armor covering his shoulder.

(Ow.)

“It’s not perfect,” he rumbles at last. “It would be better if she were safe. But if she won’t let herself be safe…” He trails off, his sigh weird and echoing. “I don’t have the right to criticize.”

She never knew Robin, not really. Better than the first one, sure—the first one was chattier, but he retired pretty soon after she started her life of crime and if she ever saw him again it wasn’t under a mask—but that didn’t say much. She knew he fought like he was a movie protagonist in a barfight, underhanded and dirty but so reckless, convinced that nothing could really hurt him. Killing him took some of the mystery out—the Joker didn’t care who he was but Harley was curious, read up on him in news articles. Some nobody kid that no one cared about until Bruce Wayne took him in to make himself look better.

(Wayne’s grief seemed pretty real, though. Harley’d half thought he was gonna hunt Batman down himself—thought _that_ shit had been hilarious at the time—and he never really seemed like the same guy afterwards. So maybe not _all_ a publicity stunt.)

Jason Todd was some stupid teenager who thought he was immortal and got himself involved with the wrong people for thrills. It’s not hard to make the connection.

“I’ll try to keep her out of the dangerous shit,” Harley murmurs.

“I’ll be there if you can’t.”

She huffs. She should probably straighten back up at some point, partly because his armor is really uncomfortable, but she stays put. Regardless of how calm everything is right now, she’s still herself, and she probably shouldn’t make any semi-sudden moves when she’s actively touching him, right?

(The reasoning doesn’t quite carry to the point of explaining why she started it in the first place.)

“Right,” she says. “Because I _definitely_ know how to get ahold of you.”

His mouth pulls in half a grin. “We can figure something out. It wouldn’t be the first time I worked with someone else.”

Her first thought is that he has definitely, absolutely figured something out already no matter what she says. Her second thought is: “If you’re talking about _working_ working, I don’t do it for free. You’ll want Montoya’s little hero squad for that.”

“I’m keeping an eye on them,” he says, because of course he is. “And I never expected you to.”

Harley does sit up then, because leaning on a potential client is probably unprofessional, and also because the conversation just took a turn she doesn’t know what to do with at all. “You know I’m a mercenary, right?”

Batman looks at her. “You can go places I can’t,” he says. “Speak to people who would shoot me on sight. I could use your help, Harley, if you’ll give it.”

She chews her bottom lip. It’s tempting. There’s no way that fucking _Batman_ isn’t loaded somehow, or at least being supported by someone who is. And if he used her even a fraction as often as he dug into things himself—hell, maybe she could move to a place with a real bedroom in it, or get a couch that didn’t try to stab her in the ass, or…

But.

But it would be so, so easy to fall back into her old habits. It’s easy not to think. It’s easy to let somebody else be her backup. It’s so hard to build a reputation of her own, make it so people are afraid to hurt her because it’s _her._ Not Joker’s girlfriend, not Batman’s henchman. Harley Quinn.

“And when people find out I’m talking to you?” she asks instead.

“You don’t have to talk to me,” Batman says. “I’d send someone else. Or a few, so there’s less of a pattern to follow.”

Okay. Okay. Fuck. “And I wouldn’t have to do anything weird, or follow any special rules, or…”

He glances away and she feels obscurely better. “I’d prefer you not kill anyone if you didn’t have to,” he says. “But it’s your decision, Harley. And you don’t have to make it now.”

She thinks about Cassandra, and about robbing bougie grocery stores and trying to figure out what to do with a pound of kale a week afterwards. When Batman gets to his feet, she panics and stands up too, jerky and awkward.

“Can I change my mind?” she blurts. “If it doesn’t work out. If it’s…” She struggles for the words.

His voice is gentler than she’s ever heard it. “You can leave,” he says. “I won’t even ask why.”

“And you _promise_ no one would know I ever worked for you.” Her blood feels thin, heart stammering. It feels like a terrible idea, but when have her actually good ideas felt good at the time?

“I’d do everything in my power to keep it secret.” Not reassuring from someone else, perhaps, but there’s an implication there: he’s been doing this for years, and the only identity that slipped out was Jason’s.

Harley is nodding before she realizes it. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. But no heroics, okay? I can take care of myself.”

A tiny flick of a smile again. “I never thought you couldn’t,” he says, and it’s so sweet that she almost hugs him on reflex but she remembers some kind of professionalism and sticks her hand out to shake on it instead.

His gauntlet is rough against her palm. “I’ll be in touch,” he says.

“I’ll be here,” she answers, and watches in awe as a 6’-plus maniac in plate armor slips back through her window and makes it look graceful.

* * *

The next day, a cardboard box turns up in the mail.

This is not surprising. Brick and mortar stores never have glitter in the quantities that Harley needs, so she’s been forced to either have it shipped to her safehouse or go without—which obviously is not happening. The weird part is that, when she flips the box over to retrieve her prize, something else rattles to the table along with the glitter jar and handfuls of packing peanuts.

She frowns, dropping the box to the side. The second item is almost covered by styrofoam and she thinks for a second that she just imagined an extra clatter, but then when she’s trying to sweep the table clean her hand bumps into hard plastic.

It’s a phone. Not anything fancy as far as she can tell, looks like it could be any one of the dozens of burners she’s gone through over the years. It’s just barely a step ahead of a flip-phone, a little slide-out keyboard nestled underneath the screen half. The shell is a dusky pink, and the back has a rhinestone pattern on it: a diamond shape divided into red and blue quarters.

And that’s _her_ thing. It’s not impossible that she has a fan in a warehouse somewhere who happened to drop their phone in her package before sending it to her, but it’s gotta be pretty close to impossible, right?

Cautiously, she presses the power button. It starts out looking normal, logos and stuff, but then the screen flickers dark grey and says _BIOMETRICS RECOGNIZED_ in ominous white Futura and she’s just about to start panicking about whether she’s holding a tiny BeDazzled bomb when Batman’s sigil fades into view.

She has a Batphone. He gave her a Batphone. He snuck a Batphone into her _mail._

“Isn’t that a felony?” she breathes to no one in particular.

“Isn’t everything you do a felony?” Cassandra asks, sitting upside-down on the shitty couch, her socked feet swaying over the back cushion.

“’S not mine this time, sweetheart,” Harley says distractedly. The sigil is still there, surrounded by a thin white circle that pulses gently like the beat of a mechanical heart, and everything that Harley knows about phones bids her to press it. For all that this particular phone looks like it was designed when touchscreens were still rare, tapping the icon seems to work.

She doesn’t know what to expect. A hologram, maybe. But the screen goes black, and then a note unfolds itself line by line: a name, a list of addresses, a vague schedule.

_Learn everything you can. Contact will meet you at Foxglove, 23:00 next Saturday._

She can do that. She can definitely do that.

“Get your shoes on, Cassie,” she says, looking up. “We’ve got a job.”

* * *

Foxglove is a cramped, hole-in-the-wall place that used to be a bar but lost its liquor license a few years back. That should have killed it right then—ingesting every toxin in arm’s reach is a celebrated Gothamite pastime, after all—but somehow it survived, switching gears from a shady place to get trashed and into a slightly dark place to get a burger. The burgers are pretty good, Harley decides after she’s halfway through one; her bet’s still on money laundering as the reason Foxglove is still open, though.

She scans the room, trying to guess who her mysterious “contact” is going to be, and how the hell she’s supposed to know who it is. There are a few other people here, scattered in singles and a super loud group of four at the booth behind hers, but it’s nowhere near crowded and nobody _looks_ like they run with Batman. (But then again, neither does she.) A dusty CRT television bolted onto the wall plays a tinny football game to an audience of one. In the absence of liquor bottles, the wooden shelves behind the bar are full of kitschy junk that Harley kind of loves; the big bald guy who brought her food is busying himself with rearranging a set of creepy ceramic camels. There’s a plate at the bar with half a pound of fries on it, but the rickety stool in front of it is empty.

Harley is honestly starting to consider stealing it when the door opens again, bell dinging in what probably used to sound like a friendly jingle but now sounds as smoke-stained and sticky as the rest of the joint. The newcomer meets the not-bartender’s eye, shakes her head, and is halfway to Harley’s booth by the time the door even closes behind her.

Harley remembers, a little belatedly, to swallow the rest of her mouthful of burger. The woman is tall—not Batman-tall, but still noticeably above average—and gorgeous in a way that seems somehow like a threat. Her eyes are green and suspicious, her hair a violent red that’s just this side of unnatural. It has to be her normal color, though; either that or she takes the time to dye her eyebrows to match, and that’s definitely the reason Harley’s staring. It’s better than checking out her shoulders, which definitely also look very nice.

The stranger folds herself into the booth across from Harley, the cracked maroon vinyl creaking in protest. “Show me your phone,” she says.

Harley momentarily considers the idea that her brain has stopped working under the influence of a cute redhead. It wouldn’t be the first time. “If you’re trying to get my number, all you had to do was ask,” comes out of her mouth before she can consider it. So she owns it, instead, and grins.

Probably-Batman’s-Contact rolls her eyes. “I hope we both have better taste,” she says waspishly. “I mean the one _he_ gave you.”

Something in her tone bypasses Harley’s ability to not reach into her pocket for the Batphone, even though she’s already fully convinced that this is the person she’s meant to talk to. Definitely-Batman’s-Contact has nice hands, too: graceful fingers, nails cut short. A couple of hangnails look to have been picked instead of clipped off, but Harley can’t really judge. A couple of thumbtaps, a pause, and when the contact slides the phone back across the table it reads _BIOMETRICS RECOGNIZED_ again.

“Huh,” Harley says. “Neat.”

“I assume you’ve found something?”

Straight to business. Ugh. Harley fights the urge to wrinkle her nose or roll her eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, twisting to pull her discarded jacket out from under her leg and rifle through the pockets. “Just gimme a sec.”

Silence.

Her fingers close around the battered edge of a notebook. Five by seven inches, college ruled and spiral bound, adorable cat on the front, three-quarters full of handwritten notes. Doodles in every margin, free of charge. “This guy’s in some deep shit, huh?” she asks as she slides it over.

Cute Redhead quirks an eyebrow at Harley, but doesn’t look up. She flicks the notebook cover open, thumbs through a few pages. “He will be,” she says ominously (and someone from a supervillainous background shouldn’t find that hot but, well), shutting the book again. One of her hands vanishes under the table; a second later, Harley flinches as something lands on the seat next to her. An envelope? Her fee, probably, but couldn’t she have just handed it over? Then again, it probably looks less like a drug deal if it’s thrown like that. Then again _again,_ though, would anyone have really cared if it were a drug deal?

“We’ll call when we need you,” says Cute Redhead, swinging her long legs out from the booth and standing up. She pauses for a moment before leaning a hand next to Harley’s plate. From any other angle, it might look like flirtation, but her eyes are hard. It’s definitely meant to be looming.

Harley tries not to squeak. She’s not even sure what emotion it is that she’s feeling.

“He’s chosen to trust you,” says Threatening Redhead. “I haven’t. If you turn on him, Quinn, I’m much more willing to kill you than he is.”

Definitely, definitely shouldn’t be a little bit into that. “Not planning on it,” she manages. “Turning on him, I mean. Seems dumb. And I mean I’ve made some bad decisions before but, like, those were average to below average bad decisions, not—”

Scary/Cute Redhead straightens up again. “Just something to think about,” she says, and turns to leave.

Harley, in a minor miracle, knows better than to say anything more.

* * *

Working for Batman pays well. Like, really well. And yeah, she has rates that she figured out herself and she knows what they are so it really shouldn’t surprise her, but it’s like…

She’s not really had a job that went on that long before. She’s used to shit that takes her a couple of hours, maybe a day. It’s a little weird. She feels like she just robbed something.

Not a bad feeling, though. So when the weird little burner phone starts freaking out at her, buzzing like crazy on the table, she practically dives for it.

* * *

Harley hasn’t found herself in Blüdhaven too often over the past few years. Or ever, but the Joker was weirdly focused on Gotham to the exclusion of almost every other place in the world, so.

It doesn’t really seem like much to write home about. It’s kinda hard to figure out why Batman even had her come here, but it’s not like the phone goes two ways. …as far as she knows.

Anyway, like hell is she gonna trust the trains to be on time and also like hell is she gonna assume that she can find parking outside a city bar on the weekend, so she ends up there… really early. _Really_ early.

(This place actually sells alcohol, though, so. At least now Harley knows that Batman’s not against bar-shaped things that are actually bars.)

The Bird’s Nest is roomier than Foxglove, but also seems to have no idea what it wants to be. It mostly looks like a standard dive bar, complete with half-burned out neon signs, but the tall tables are all clustered to one side of the main room. Harley is pretty sure the empty half is supposed to be a dance floor, but the swivelly lights on the ceiling aren’t on and everyone over there is just sort of standing on it, so really there’s no way to tell for sure. While Foxglove had been sort of vaguely inhabited, the Bird’s Nest is _packed,_ the conversations so loud and so everywhere that it’s hard to tell what music is even playing. Harley’s got good lungs and a lot of practice shouting drink orders through ringing ears, though, so she’s got her cocktail (just one, because bartenders outside of Gotham can’t be expected to know how hard it is for Harley to poison herself these days) and she won a minor scuffle over a barstool and now all she has to do is kill time.

She’s immersed in watching a couple of people arguing on the far side of the attempted dance floor when someone inserts themself between her barstool and her view. Probably just trying to get the bartender’s attention, she figures—or they’re trying to hit on her, but now isn’t the time, she’s got _drama_ to watch—so she leans back to try and peer around them.

“Doctor Quinzel?” says the someone, and for just a second, she freezes. And then her brain restarts, and she thinks: _oh, right._

“So formal,” she says, instead of _the last time anyone called me “Doctor Quinzel” it was Batman trying to make me feel bad,_ and she looks her contact up and down. He’s tall and lanky, dressed unassumingly in a t-shirt and jeans, with a mop of black hair that needs to either be cut or played with. “You must be, uh…?”

“Dick,” he says. He smiles, blue eyes crinkling. (God, are all of Batman’s lackeys this pretty? _Why?)_ “Get the jokes out early. I’ve heard them all.”

Harley tries so, so hard not to laugh, and she comes so painfully close to managing it. She sporfles slightly into her straw. “I could probably think of a new one,” she says, digging into her pocket for the Batphone.

Dick takes it, fiddles with it in a way that could be interpreted as putting a number in if she didn’t know any better. _BIOMETRICS RECOGNIZED._

Cool. She slips it back into her shorts and gets to her feet, finishing her cocktail with a satisfied slurpy straw noise and dropping the glass back on the bar. “Wanna get out of here?” she asks, because this blind-date-or-something scenario that he’s put them in probably won’t stretch far enough to cover ‘guy buys notebook from shady chick’.

He looks momentarily amused. “Sure,” he says. He catches her hand with his so they don’t lose each other on the way out of the bar and already she likes this guy way more than the last person Bats had her talk to. Even if he does let go as soon as they’re on the sidewalk and free of the crowd.

“So,” Harley begins as Dick leads them into an alleyway. “Are you gonna threaten my life if I break Ba—uh, our friend’s heart, or whatever?”

“If you—” He stops to give her a weird look, frowning in abject confusion. It’s kinda funny. “No,” he says. “Why?”

Harley shrugs, hopping over a grimy puddle. “That’s what the last chick did,” she says. “Figured it might be a thing.”

Dick snorts. “No,” he repeats. “I don’t think he needs me to do anything.” There might be some sort of bitterness behind those words, but it’s so well-hidden that she second-, third-, and fourth-guesses it.

So she avoids the subject altogether and just offers him her notebook full of spying. He takes it, but he doesn’t flip through it like his predecessor did; he just reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and hands over another envelope in exchange.

She doesn’t cuddle her payment. But she does think about it.

“Harley,” says Dick, voice softer. She looks up, brow furrowed, but he’s still looking at the notebook. “When you talked to him, how was he?”

She hesitates. “Didn’t you talk to him when he told you to meet me?”

He huffs a laugh. “He texted me twice,” he says. “I don’t think anyone would call that talking.”

There is clearly something going on. Harley stares at him as if she can will some sort of association into existence, like she can figure out who he is besides just some guy named Dick (if that is his real name) who knows Batman, but she’s got nothing. His eyes look a little familiar. His voice, maybe. But if she did run into him before, if she does recognize something about him, it’s buried beneath so many layers of toxins and head trauma that there’s no way she’ll know.

So she sighs and looks away. “I dunno,” she says. “He seemed fine, but I’m not really used to seeing him when he’s not angry or disappointed, you know?”

Dick gives her a look that she doesn’t understand. “I know,” he answers quietly. “If you do see him again—” He pauses; his mouth tightens into an annoyed line before he shakes his head. “Never mind,” he says with a chuckle.

She gets it. Her expression softens. “I’ll tell him you said hi.”

* * *

The third location, thankfully, is back in Gotham. Less thankfully, it’s in the ass-end of the docks, the part that smells like fish and rotting seaweed, where you could probably get a little high off of licking the concrete if you didn’t mind your tongue falling off, and if you’re lucky you won’t find a corpse in the dumpster you’re hallucinating in.

Not that she has any experience whatsoever with that last part.

The shadiest shit in the whole city goes down either in the Iceberg Lounge or right here. Part of her is tense, listening for the slightest noise, acutely aware of the switchblade in her pocket; part of her feels like she’s right at home. She doesn’t know which one is correct anymore.

Harley crouches on the edge of the dock, watching the toxin-clogged seawater slosh sickly against the pilings. “Hey there, Romie,” she coos to the waves.

The waves do not reply, but someone clears their throat behind her and she spooks so hard she nearly falls in.

“Holy _fucking—”_ Harley gasps, spinning around, hand already on her knife by the time she’s done standing up; but it’s just a man in a suit, hands in his pockets, apologetic slant of a smile on his mouth.

“Sorry,” he says, taking a half-step back. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

His voice and his face connect in her brain, hundreds of trashy entertainment gossip shows and tabloids vying for space, and for several seconds Harley Quinn is left totally speechless. “Bruce _Wayne?”_ she asks, almost in a squeak.

He winces. “I’m trying to keep a low profile here, Harley,” he says, gently admonishing, and—and none of this makes any sense. Holy shit, he’s an idiot. He’s got to be a total, complete moron if he’s himself, here, on the worst part of the docks, alone. God, the only way this makes sense for his self-preservation instinct is if he knows for a fact that Batman is lurking behind a corner and just waiting for someone to try something. What the _fuck._

“Wh,” she manages. She has so many questions, but they all keep trying to come out of her at the same time, stumbling over her tongue so none of them come out at all.

Bruce fucking Wayne sighs. “We can talk in the car, if you want,” he says.

He’s gone insane. Or she’s gone insane-er. But, as usual, she decides simply to roll with it. “Sure,” she says. “Okay.”

* * *

He at least had the common sense to park several blocks away in a well-lit area, but that does still mean he had to walk several blocks, in a very nice suit, while being Bruce Wayne, alone, through some very poorly-lit areas. So either he’s as dumb as the tabloids say he is, he has secret bodyguards hidden out of sight, or he’s a crime boss so big that nobody wants to take him down and so secretive that Harley’s never heard about it.

His very shiny, very fancy car is untouched. So he’s a very lucky idiot, if it’s the first one. It bleeps cheerfully when it unlocks; he opens the passenger door for her, which is all kinds of weird but it’s a kind of weird she likes a little bit, so that’s at least nice. The interior smells like it’s never been used before and the leather seats stick to the backs of her thighs at every hole in her tights. The engine is totally silent when it starts up—she only realizes that it’s on at all when they start moving, and she somewhat belatedly puts her seatbelt on.

“So,” says Bruce as they pull away from the curb. “You have questions.”

“Uh-huh,” Harley answers. “So, most importantly, what the _fuck?”_

He snickers. He’s got a nice laugh, actually, even if it does sound a little bit like he’s laughing _at_ her. “You’ll have to narrow it down.”

She rolls her eyes, feet kicking mutinously in the footwell. “You and Batman,” she says. “I thought you hated the guy. I mean, you know, after…”

It’s probably not a good idea to bring up Jason. Harley shuts her mouth with an audible click.

“I do,” he says, watching the road. It’s hard to tell if he’s trying to be safe or if he’s just trying to avoid her eyes. “Technically, you don’t even know if I’m here for him. You haven’t checked.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, because someone like you is gonna wander up to someone like me in the middle of the night alone for no reason. Sure.”

He smiles with only one side of his mouth and it feels… weird. (She’s only seen him smile in pictures. That’s gotta be it.) “But you can’t be sure, can you?”

 _Really?_ Harley glares at him. “Well, I’m not gonna give you the Batphone while you’re driving,” she says primly, as if she hasn’t done way worse while driving herself.

The smirk deepens. Now that they’re leaving the worst part of town, there are a few more signs of life, other people in other cars. Harley sinks deeper into her seat, not entirely sure how visible she is from the outside, definitely not sure if she wants to end up in a tabloid somewhere with him. Just in case.

 _“Anyway,”_ she says. “You’re obviously here for him, we’ll do that part later. Why are you helping him if you hate him so much?”

His mouth tightens. “The city is safer with him in it,” he says, almost begrudgingly. “Much as I wish it wasn’t. And there are things that he can do that I can’t, and things I can do that he can’t.”

“Like talk to me?”

He nods his agreement. “Among other things.”

Harley blows out a breath, looking through the window. “Shit,” she says. “How long has that been going on?”

Bruce glances at her as they glide to a halt at a stoplight. “Longer than you’d think,” he says, and for all the intensely TMI shit she knows about his personal life, she has a feeling she won’t get much farther if she pushes him on that. “What about you?” he asks before the silence can get too oppressive. “Why are you here?”

“He’s paying me,” she says, honestly enough. “I’m a mercenary, Brucie, I can’t get too picky.”

The light changes again. They make it a couple of carlengths, but the douchebag in front of them hesitates on the turn so long that they don’t make it. “With your reputation?” he asks. “I’m sure you could find other work if you didn’t care where it came from.”

It’s not a question she likes to think about. Yeah, she could go straight-up contract killer if she felt like it. Bruce-the-hyena-not-the-person makes a real good body disposal in a pinch; she already knows that. And it’s not like she has anything against killing people, because duh.

“Yeah, well,” she says. “I’ve got a kid now. Kinda trying to keep her out of the bad kind of trouble as much as I can, y’know?”

He looks back at her, eyebrows raised. “You have a kid?” he echoes, and she would find his obvious disbelief kind of insulting if she didn’t completely agree with it.

“She’s not mine,” Harley says, too quickly. “I just sorta… picked her up.” God, how was it easier to explain this to _Batman?_

“Picked her up,” he says. He sounds skeptical in a way that almost feels like disdain.

“Lemme put it this way,” she says, annoyed. “I’m a better option than what she was dealing with and now she won’t leave. It’s not _my_ fault.” (It’s probably her fault.)

Bruce snickers. “Sorry,” he says. “You just… don’t seem the type.”

She sighs. “Yeah,” she says ruefully. “I’m really not. Even if I weren’t…” Harley gestures vaguely to herself. “Y’know, a semi-ex-supervillain, I don’t know what I’d do with her, I mean she’s a _middle school_ dropout at this point and the only things I’m qualified to teach her are explosives and college-level psychology.” And there’s the panic again. She rubs her face with her hands, only just barely not smudging her eyeliner. “God, I shoulda left her with Dinah.”

“Well,” Bruce says, graciously not asking who the hell Dinah is or how the fuck Harley Quinn ended up with a semi-adopted child and even more graciously not just stopping the car and kicking her out entirely, “if you want any help, I have some experience with runaways.”

She can’t tell if he’s bringing up Jason to try and… taunt her, or egg her into something, or if he’s actually trying to be nice to her for some reason. She doesn’t like not knowing. “What, you wanna coparent?” Harley leans over the center console to nudge him playfully with her elbow, and he might not look like much, but his bicep doesn’t have a lot of give to it. Damn. “Aren’t you a little old for me?”

The laugh sounds like it startles him. Bruce clutches his chest, his other hand relaxed on the steering wheel. “I heard you were cruel, Quinn,” he says, eyes sparkling with what looks like genuine humor. “I never knew you were that cruel.”

She grins, relaxing now that it feels like the conversation is in territory she controls. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she says easily. “You probably deserve better than me anyhow. Even if you are a billionaire.”

He snorts. “Believe it or not, I think you deserve better too.” Then, quieter, like he’s worried someone will overhear, or like he’s just forgotten that he’s carrying on an actual conversation: “Besides, I’m spoken for.”

Harley scoffs her immediate disbelief. “Yeah, right. And it’s not over every tabloid from here to Central City?”

There’s that little slanting smile again, pulling at her memory in a way she doesn’t like. “My partner can be very discreet when the situation calls for it.”

She narrows her eyes. “You know I’m gonna be tryin’ to figure this out now, right?”

“You won’t.”

“Batman,” she says, and he laughs outright. “Superman. Batman _and_ Superman in some kinda weird spandex triad—”

“Keep guessing, Quinn.”

* * *

“I do mean it, though,” he says later—much later, after they’ve already done the whole exchange that they met up for, after the conversation moved through at least six other topics. His fancy-ass car is idling on the side of her awful street and it’s the most conspicuous thing in the world but there’s nothing surprising about a billionaire hiring someone like her, so even if someone notices then it won’t lead back to Batman, and also she really didn’t want to walk that far and the buses are _so_ slow at night. “If you need it, I’m willing to help. All you have to do is ask.”

Harley hesitates, hand halfway to her seatbelt. She can’t see or hear anything but sincerity. Maybe she can’t trust her instincts all the time when it comes to people, and maybe she doesn’t need to hide behind anyone anymore, but.

Bruce Wayne isn’t like her, or the Joker, or Batman. There’s nothing he can reasonably do that would affect her reputation in a way she cares about, put her in any more or less danger than she’s already in.

And it’s for Cass.

“I’d like that,” she says. Harley doesn’t know how he was as a father, but at least he was one. Twice, even. And—

Twice.

(Far, far too late, the trivia connects in her head. Bruce’s kids were never in the spotlight as much as he was, but wasn’t the first one—)

“Hang on,” she says, frowning a little. “Was your other kid named Dick? Cute guy, lives in Blüdhaven I guess?”

His expression changes: mild curiosity, but half the reason she’s still alive is her ability to see little emotional changes before they hit, and just for a moment he looks almost guarded. “Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

She bites her lip as the pieces click into place, momentarily considering how far she wants to push this. “He was the last person Bats asked me to meet with,” she says. “So both of them ended up working with him, huh?”

There’s something off about his smile. “You understand why we don’t get along,” he says.

And all at once, she knows. More to the point: she knows that it can’t have been a mistake. He didn’t have to send her to Dick and then meet her like this. Dick didn’t have to tell her his actual name. Bruce didn’t have to answer her questions.

(To be fair, it’s not like she can do too much damage. If she told anyone, who would believe her, as untrustworthy and unreliable as half the underground thinks she is?)

But still. He didn’t have to let her know. She doesn’t know why he did, what he could possibly get out of it.

(Maybe that isn’t the point.)

She looks away, nodding to herself. “Well,” Harley says. “Next time you see him, Dick wants to talk.”


End file.
